So Wrong It’s Nom – a healthy dollop of guilty pleasures

A true celebration of food can be found in the blog So wrong it’s nom . Annem Hobson, the blogger behind @sowrongitsnom has caught the nation’s attention with an overwhelming amount of press following her Cheese advent calendar and the Cheester egg. We were excited to sit down and talk to Annem. We talk cheese porn, food experimentation and cheester eggs.

Where does your love for food come from?

My love for food comes from my mum. She is one of the best Indian cooks ever, and I’m a little bit bias when I say that but no, she loves food, she loves feeding people and she gets excited about quite strange mixes.

How did So Wrong It’s Nom come about?

So Wrong It’s Nom came about from me being somebody who loves to eat without any kind of limitations. I say that the tagline is ‘a healthy dollop of guilty pleasures’ because to me I love food and I think it’s something to be celebrated. I don’t believe it should be categorised into certain diets or fads of what you should eat. I think everything is really, really good in healthy dollops.

What is the Cheester egg and how did it begin?

So it’s a solid egg using a cheese called Napier which won the London Urban Food award in 2015. It’s a really lovely cheese, quite creamy, quite crumbly with a bit of sharp flavour in there.

I went to a cheese making class at Wildes Cheese. I did a few of their courses for fun and I got to know the guys. I approached them with this cooky idea. I was like look I’ve got this trade marked, I’d love to do it, I’d love for you to do it, do you want to work together? We only made 300 eggs and we desperately had to make more.

You can also check out Annem’s cheese advent calendar and sign up for one here.

2 words, cheese porn! How did you start that?

I bought a raclette machine which is hands down one the best things I’ve bought. I started to have friends round to have raclette parties. You literally put the grill in the middle, everyone sits around it and there’s melted cheese everywhere, it’s great.

I remember one day, I had the grill fired up and my husband started to pour melted cheese onto potatoes, and I said ‘that looks really really good’. We just started laughing about it and thought, ‘let’s just film that and put it in slow mo’ so we did. Then one thing led to another and we thought, wouldn’t it now be funny with porn music and it just escalated. It was one of those silly ideas that we constantly like to experiment with.

It was meant to be a series. I’d like to go back to that so if anyone’s got a cheese that they’d like to see in a pornographic setting….

So I think we can agree that you love cheese. If you were to describe your relationship with cheese what would you say it’s like?

I’d say it’s like a husband because it’s like the reliable thing, it makes every meal better, it goes well with practically everything. it comes in all different varieties, it can please at any time.

Can you give our followers a recipe or two that they should try?

Prawn to be wild – it’s a quick curry in a hurry (15 minutes). It works best with really juicy fresh prawns. Once you’ve got those basic things in your cupboard you can make it again and again, and if you don’t want to use prawns you can use chicken.

Bread cheese pie – so unhealthy but so satisfying. Either make your fresh bread if you want or buy a lovely loaf of bread, cut gorges into it, stuff them with mozzarella, prosciutto ham and basil, wrap it in foil and dunk it in the oven. It’s like a sharer so you put it in the middle of the table and enjoy. It’s almost as good as a baked Camembert.

Where do you get your inspiration from to devise these wild concoctions like the pumpkin, peanut pakoras?

A lot of the ideas come from my mum, who has devised a list so I should start crediting her. Sometimes I’ll also be eating something and I’ll start thinking, ‘how can I make this really crazy’.

I try to introduce unique twists on the dishes I do whether that’s for example a aloo gobi which instead of using white potatoes and traditional spices, I mixed up the spices and used sweet potato. I think food should be celebrated. You can have breakfast at dinner and dinner at breakfast, whatever order you want. Food is there to be experimented with. Trial and error is the best way we get some of best dishes these days.

The cheesiest places you’ve been to?

St Moritz in Soho – they do the best raclette and fondue. it’s really tiny and it really pongs of cheese so you’ve really got to like cheese.

UK’s cheese wheel in Kerb Food, Camden – they make freshly cooked pasta and they put it in this massive wheel of cheese centre and toss it in cheese. You’re left with really creamy cheesy pasta.

What’s next?

We are doing a site revamp at the moment. As part of that, we are introducing a shop side which should be amazing. It’s going to be divided into two – the blog and shop side. My vision for that is think Hotel Chocolat but for cheese, so cheese being there for any market where chocolate dominates.

Do you have any food places that you’re raving about right now in London?

Brger Bear/Stokey Bears –they are hands down the best burgers I’ve had in London. They are really juicy, the meat just melts in your mouth and the buns are just perfect.

Chick ‘n’ Sours – they do really lovely chicken dishes but they always do really sour drinks or pickles to go alongside it and the combination of the two is amazing.

To find out more about Annem’s recipes and cheesy delights, visit the blog here.